


Looking back (in order to move forward)

by crackinthecup



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Healing, Honesty, Implied/Referenced Torture, Introspection, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Death, Reincarnation, Stream of Consciousness, Tattoos, Valinor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:35:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27456586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackinthecup/pseuds/crackinthecup
Summary: Celebrimbor looked down at his tattooed hand, flexing his fingers, watching the fine lines of ink bend and shift with his movements. Half skin, half ink, alive with potential. For the first time since his release from the Halls, he wanted to pick up a hammer again.“Don’t call it chance,” he said. “Call it our future, born of what we’ve done, what we’ve been through.”Or: Tattoos and truths on a bright morning in Valinor.
Relationships: Celebrimbor | Telperinquar/Maeglin | Lómion
Comments: 10
Kudos: 41





	Looking back (in order to move forward)

“Stay still,” Maeglin murmured.

He readjusted his grip on Celebrimbor’s wrist, angling it so the back of his hand caught the bright light of the morning sun.

From where he was sitting across from Maeglin at the dining table, Celebrimbor gave him an apologetic smile.

“I think I’ll need a break soon,” he said as he felt Maeglin’s needles puncturing into his skin once again.

Maeglin hummed in acknowledgment. He was using a thin metal rod tipped with sharp needles to tattoo geometric patterns over Celebrimbor’s hand, in a manner similar to the Dwarven technique he had learned long ago in Nan Elmoth.

It was strangely hypnotic, watching Maeglin work, so much so that Celebrimbor found his mind wandering freely as in a dream. He thought of his new life on these blessed shores, a quiet life shared with Maeglin in their cosy cottage on the outskirts of Tirion; he thought of his mother and his grandmother, family like the steady warmth of a forge-fire; he thought of his father, bitter and alone in the Halls of Awaiting.

He thought also of the lines of ink slowly taking shape over the back of his hand, and he thought of why he was doing this in the first place. Maeglin had offered to tattoo him before, during their few peaceful years in Gondolin, but Celebrimbor had declined. While he had always appreciated tattoos on other people, and the angular patterns across Maeglin’s back most of all, he had not wanted his flesh to be the canvas for another’s craft.

At the time, no one could have predicted that his body was fated to become just that: a canvas for cruelty, for warfare, for the twisted designs of someone who had once been his friend.

He thought of Annatar—Sauron, as he should rightly name him, but Celebrimbor had spent many years in the Halls of Awaiting, had heard of the rise and fall of the dark power in the East of Middle-earth, and it did not feel right, somehow, to think of him as Sauron, not now, not anymore. He thought of the flesh being peeled from his fingers strip by agonising strip, he thought of Annatar’s words— _they are still functional, you understand, you can still create, Tyelperinquar_ —he thought of how Annatar had made him take a hammer in hand, in his raw, bleeding fingers, had made him use it, had stood beside him in a mockery of their days together as for hours and hours Celebrimbor had tried to make something, anything, the littlest thing. But the work of his ruined hands had been sloppy, ugly, _wrong_ , and Annatar had not laughed, no, that might have been easier; instead, Annatar had looked _disappointed_.

“Tyelpë.” Maeglin’s voice drew him out of his thoughts. Celebrimbor blinked. The morning was drenched in light like only mornings in Valinor could be; the past seemed to melt away, leaving only brightness, only Maeglin’s fingers gently cradling his wrist.

“Let’s take that break,” Maeglin said, perceptive as ever, and Celebrimbor’s chest swelled with gratitude; Maeglin’s presence was a comfort beyond words, a sense of youth and shared grief and the slow turning of the years all wrapped up into one.

Celebrimbor glanced down at his half-finished tattoo, a band of small, interlocking triangles across the back of his hand. “It’s beautiful,” he murmured, turning his hand this way and that, entranced by how the ink seemed to gleam like darkest obsidian in the morning light.

Maeglin carefully set the tattooing rod aside, lips quirking upwards in one of his rare smiles. “I’m glad you like it,” he said, lifting Celebrimbor’s hand to eye level; “I’ll add a few lines here, going up to your fingers, and do a thick band here, like a cuff around your wrist. It will look like a glove.”

“Not a glove,” Celebrimbor countered, because he did not want to hide. There was nothing for him to hide, not a single scar to be found on his new body; by the grace of the Valar he had been clothed in skin that was smooth and flawless, skin that did not remember, skin that did not quite feel like home. “Not a glove,” he repeated, more gently than before. “It will look like jewellery.”

Maeglin took a moment to consider. “I will leave wider spaces between the lines, then. Less to cover and more to highlight.”

Celebrimbor nodded. He shifted in his chair, slightly, moving so that the light fell onto his face, warm and bright and lovely. He took in a deep breath, just because he could.

“I wish they would let us keep our scars,” he heard himself saying.

Across from him, Maeglin visibly tensed. “I don’t know about that,” he said, voice soft in the silence of the morning.

“Would you not want your history written on you?”

“I am rather glad to be rid of my history.”

Celebrimbor let out a quiet hum. He thought of Maeglin’s new body, the unblemished expanse of his skin, pale and unscarred: nothing but him, the soft loveliness of his being, everything he should have been from the very beginning. Celebrimbor thought of Rog, too, standing tall and proud as any lord but so unfailingly kind, with tattoos covering every inch of his skin, scarred or otherwise. Last of all he thought of Narvi, who used to wear her tattoos like she wore her rings, or the trinkets in her long beard.

He had thought of Narvi often before his death in the ruins of Eregion, and afterwards too, trying to make sense of the life he had led, trying to find meaning in the spaces between his wounds.

He closed his eyes, thinking of grief and fate, of how one could not exist without the other.

It took effort, but he managed to shift his attention back to the brightness of the morning, to Maeglin’s dark eyes steadily watching him from across the table; he wondered if this would ever get easier, this re-focusing, leaving the past where it belonged.

He let out a breath he didn’t even know he had been holding. “If you are glad to be rid of your scars, then how about your tattoos?” he asked Maeglin. “Would you ever consider re-doing them, or getting new ones?”

Maeglin’s tattoos had gone along with his scars, like the Valar wanted them to shrug off their old selves, cast aside all that had shaped them over the years and live in this hallowed land like vessels filled with nothing but bliss.

There was bliss to be found here, true enough, and Celebrimbor would not want it any other way; but he had learned long ago that he could not chop off a part of himself and still expect to live a full life.

“I have thought of it, and I don’t think I would like to,” Maeglin replied slowly. “My tattoos always reminded me of home, and, well…”

“Of course,” Celebrimbor said; he would have pulled Maeglin into a hug if there hadn’t been a table between them. “I understand.”

Maeglin sighed. Without looking at Celebrimbor, he picked up the tattooing rod and dipped it into the little pot of ink at his elbow. He then resumed his work in silence, methodically pressing the needles into Celebrimbor’s skin, leaving behind one smudge of ink at a time.

Perhaps more so than with anyone else, Celebrimbor had always felt comfortable sitting in silence with Maeglin. It had always been an easy silence, a shared moment, a connection that did not need to be voiced.

Now, however, he could practically feel Maeglin’s churning thoughts. It was in the stiffness of his shoulders, his lips tightly pressed together as though he never wanted to speak again.

“What’s on your mind, Lómion?” Celebrimbor prompted once the silence had grown long.

“Ondolindë,” Maeglin said, too quickly, voice shaking too much; he took a deep breath, adding, “I don’t want anything to go unsaid between us.”

“Probably for the best—keeping secrets didn’t go so well last time,” Celebrimbor said, not with cruelty but with a biting sort of humour that had come easily to him since his time in the Halls. But then a stricken look broke over Maeglin’s face, and Celebrimbor reached out to him with his free hand, curling his fingers around his wrist, stopping his ministrations. “Hey, no, I didn’t mean—”

“I wondered at you seeking me out,” Maeglin said, almost too quietly to be heard; he set the tattooing rod aside once again, letting Celebrimbor twine his fingers through his own, there on the table, caught in the light. “I was sure that you hated me.”

Celebrimbor’s brow furrowed. He had felt many things over the years, things that he sometimes thought could have been hatred, but never truly and never for Maeglin.

“Hate you?” he echoed, voice soft but urgent. “I’ve never hated you, Lómion. Please, banish that thought.”

“I was weak,” Maeglin went on, heedless of Celebrimbor’s words. “You were tortured for so long by… by _him_ , and you didn’t tell him anything, and I spilled all of Ondolindë’s secrets to him, to _them_ , as soon as they promised me—” Maeglin broke off suddenly.

Celebrimbor was tempted to tell him that he had been weak too. Stupid, pathetically trusting, not seeing what was right there in front of his eyes.

But he didn’t.

_An open heart is a rare gift, Tyelpë; in a kinder world, it would not bring you such grief_ , Idril had once told him, as the smoke of the ruin of Gondolin had filled the skies and the survivors had picked their way through the pathless lands at the foot of the mountains in grief and hurt and a hundred other nameless emotions.

He had understood the full extent of Maeglin’s betrayal slowly, like waking from a deep sleep. He had pieced together the story of that fateful day bit by bit, finding those who were willing to talk and listening to them in stricken silence, listening to how the House of the Mole had sided with Morgoth’s foul creatures, to how Maeglin had attacked Idril and her young son and Tuor had had no choice but to cast him from the ramparts.

Celebrimbor remembered thinking that he should have wanted to drop to his knees in the dirt; that he should have wanted to scream Maeglin’s name to the pitiless mountains until his voice broke, to tear his own heart out and spit on it and say _never again_.

But he had not wanted to do any of those things. He had felt numb, hollowed out, one more good thing turned to evil, one more ruined kingdom, one more tragedy. There had never been much point in breaking; his path, his only path, had lain onwards and upwards.

He shook his head, humbled and overcome. His life had been defined and re-defined by betrayal, by loss, by the senseless horror of death; and yet, here he was, whole or at least something like it; here he was, sitting across from Maeglin, right here in the light of a sun that seemed as radiant as Laurelin on this side of the sea.

With a pang, he realised that he had stayed silent for too long; Maeglin’s fingers were trembling within his own.

“You made your choice for reasons that can remain your own,” he told Maeglin, giving his fingers a squeeze. “We are our heritage and we are our choices and we are how we feel about those choices. I know you, Lómion. I know you did not do it out of hatred or cruelty.”

Maeglin stared at him in disbelief. “Everyone who died that day died because of me.”

“And what have you learned from it?”

Maeglin opened his mouth, then closed it again. It was hard to surprise him, but Celebrimbor knew by the flicker of doubt in his eyes that this was one of those rare times.

“I learned to hate myself more deeply than I ever thought possible,” Maeglin replied at length.

“And then?”

“What makes you think that has changed?”

“You would not be here talking to me if it hadn’t.”

Maeglin looked away. It was a long time before he spoke again. “ _And then_ I learned to live with myself,” he said slowly. “I learned who I am and who I want to be. I learned that I can’t find my place in this world through other people.”

Celebrimbor felt his heart swell, bigger and bigger until he thought it would leap out of his chest and fill the whole room. He wanted to stand up and walk around the table and take Maeglin into his arms. Maeglin had always responded better to touch than to words. In moments of anger or sadness or anything in between, a tight hug would stop the torrent of his thoughts, and he would relax into his body, into the here and now.

But strangely, Celebrimbor felt that his touch would not be needed here. Now was the time for truths, a reckoning long years in the making. It was the time for looking back in order to move forward.

“I won’t lie to you,” he began, “I was hurt when I realised what you’d done. I was angry, at you and at myself.” He paused, smiling a little smile, infinitely tender. “But I still missed your presence beside me at night, I missed your smile and the sound of your voice and the way your hair would fall into your eyes when you were working in the forge. Eventually the hurt and the anger faded away and all that was left was sadness. For you, and for us.”

Maeglin did not immediately reply, sitting as one graven in marble, the tattooing rod forgotten and dripping its ink onto the table. Celebrimbor did not rush him. They had all the time in the world.

“All I can say is that I’m sorry,” Maeglin said eventually. His eyes locked with Celebrimbor’s, and there was such an honest _openness_ about him, like a little boy, that Celebrimbor’s heart ached.

“I know. I appreciate you telling me.”

Maeglin nodded tightly. “This can be our second chance.”

Celebrimbor looked down at his tattooed hand, flexing his fingers, watching the fine lines of ink bend and shift with his movements. Half skin, half ink, alive with potential. For the first time since his release from the Halls, he wanted to pick up a hammer again.

“Don’t call it chance,” he said. “Call it our future, born of what we’ve done, what we’ve been through.”

“I will do right by you, I promise,” Maeglin said, and he smiled, and it was so soft and full of hope that Celebrimbor thought he had never loved him so much as in this moment.

“No promises,” Celebrimbor countered gently. Promises, oaths, vows. There had been too many of them in his life: easy to break, easier to corrupt. “Let’s just be. Let’s see what the next day brings and the next and the next, and take it from there.”

“Well, I can tell you exactly what the next day will bring if you don’t shut up and let me work in peace: you’ll still be sat here with a half-finished tattoo!” Maeglin teased, and this was new, this playful edge between them, or rather a rediscovery of something that had disappeared after Maeglin’s capture long ago. 

Celebrimbor thought that if he spent the rest of his life right here, in this moment, he would be content. “Do I talk too much?” he asked with grin.

Maeglin shook his head at him as he picked up his tattooing rod once more. “Always,” he said with a small smile of his own, “but I wouldn’t want you any other way.”


End file.
